Since the default WordPress username is ‘admin’, did you ever think that maybe it’s time to change it to something a bit more secure? Any hacker worth her or his salt can probably gain access to your WordPress installation quite easily. The only thing they need is a password generator of some type if you have left the default WordPress username as admin.
Besides changing the default setting, you should also do something else. If you are a single owner/poster, you should change your posting name to something other than your username. If you want to post as “Jane”, for instance, you can login in as kentucky or anything else that suits you. Why should you do this? It seems obvious but in case you missed it, if you post as “Jane” and your username for logging in is “jane”, maybe a hacker could easily guess your username. Simple, right?
Head over to ‘Users’ on the left side of your WordPress Dashboard. For the default installation, there will only be one Username, by default it is ‘admin’. Here’s what the default setting looks like:
The default username can’t be changed but what you want to do is to add another user then switch the Role of Admin to ‘no role’. In other words you can’t get rid of the admin user but you can take the administrative power away from them in order to secure your WordPress site. You’ll notice from the photo above that there is no place to choose the Role of this user.
Update: I forgot to mention that you can’t change the default username’s role until you set up a new user as admin, log out and logo back in again. Set up new user, make that user admin, log out then log in again and change the default admin’s role to ‘no role’.
Tip: You can’t change the role of the current administrator until you have another administrator lined up. Create another user, use whatever name and nickname you want, then make the Role of that new user ‘Administrator’. Once you do that, go back to the original admin user and define its Role as ‘None’. This screen shows you what to look for:
In this window, make note of two things. First, the Role menu is visible since you are adding a new user. Any new user must have a role, even if it is no role at all. Next, make sure the username and the display name are totally different. The Username is the name you use to login to the site. The Display name is the name that shows on each of your posts. Make sure they are different. Anyone can try to login with your display name and guess your password but if your username is different, your site is more secure.
TIP: Whatever your role is on any WordPress site, make sure that your username for logging in isn’t the same as your posting name. If you’re an administrator, make sure of this small but very important detail for every user of your WordPress installation.
Once you have a second administrator set up, go back and remove the administrator role from the default admin username. Once you do that, your WordPress site is a lot more secure than it used to be.
Thanks for reading!